Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

After gathering at their base, Leghorn (Livorno) in Tuscany, Orlov’s fleet finally reached Ottoman waters. It failed to raise a rebellion among the tricky Greeks and Montenegrins and then indecisively engaged the Turkish fleet off Chios. The Turks withdrew to the deceptive safety of Chesme harbour. Samuel Greig arranged a fiery lullaby for the sleeping Turks. Overnight on 25/26 June, his fireships floated into the harbour of Chesme. This ‘ingenious ambuscade’ turned the harbour into an inferno. ‘Encumbered with ships, powder and artillery,’ Chesme, wrote Baron de Tott, watching from the Turkish side, ‘soon became a volcano that engulfed the whole naval force of the Turks’.²⁹ Eleven thousand Turks perished. Alexei Orlov boasted to Catherine that the water of Chesme was stained incarnadine, and the victorious Empress passed this macabre and distinctly unEnlightened vision on to an excited Voltaire.³⁰ It was the most disastrous day for Turkish arms since the Battle of Lepanto.

When news of Chesme reached St Petersburg, so soon after the glories of Kagul, the Russian capital exploded with joy. There were ‘Te Deums’ and rewards for every sailor in the fleet inscribed simply: ‘I was there.’ Catherine rewarded Rumiantsev for Kagul with his field-marshal’s baton and the construction of an obelisk in her park at Tsarskoe Selo, while Alexei Orlov got the title of Chesmensky (‘of Chesme’). It was the greatest array of Russian triumphs since Poltava. Catherine was riding high – especially in Europe: Voltaire actually jumped up and down on his sickbed at Ferney and sang at the thought of so many dead infidels.³¹

Potemkin had covered himself in glory in this year of Russian victories and decided to capitalize on his new success. When operations ceased in November 1770, he asked Rumiantsev for leave to go to St Petersburg. Had someone raised his hopes that Catherine would receive him with open arms? Afterwards, Potemkin’s enemies claimed that Rumiantsev was relieved to be rid of him. But he actually admired Potemkin’s brains and military record, and approved this trip, charging him to protect the interests of himself and his army. His letters to his protégé were as paternal as Potemkin’s to him were filial.

Potemkin returned to Petersburg with the prestige of a war hero and Rumiantsev’s enthusiastic recommendations: ‘This officer of great ability can make far-sighted observations about the land which has been the theatre of war, which deserve your Majesty’s attention and respect and, because of this, I’m entrusting him with all the events that have to be reported to Her Majesty.’³²

The Empress, in an exultant mood after Kagul and Chesme, welcomed him warmly: we know from the Court Journal that he was invited to dine with Catherine eleven times during his short stay.³³ Legend says there was a private audience at which Potemkin could not resist more dramatics on bended knee. He and Catherine agreed to correspond, apparently through her librarian Petrov and trusted Chamberlain Ivan Perfilevich Yelagin – useful allies around the Empress. We know little of what happened behind closed doors but one senses that they felt the stirrings of something that both knew could become serious.^*2 Whether the private state of Catherine’s relationship with Grigory Orlov himself was already shaky, Count Alexei Orlov-Chesmensky had increased the family credit at Court. Potemkin was too early to displace Grigory Orlov, but the trip was not wasted.³⁴

Grigory Orlov certainly noticed Potemkin’s welcome and made sure he returned to the army. Potemkin went back late in February, bearing a letter from Orlov to Rumiantsev in which the favourite recommended Potemkin and asked his commander to be his ‘tutor and guide’. This was a benign way for Orlov to remind his younger rival of his place, but also a sign that he had become much more important on that trip to Petersburg. He was marked.³⁵

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